Our research seeks a better understanding of the social and economic environments that have both positive and negative influences on development from the prenatal period onward. This work leads us to pursue a better understanding of broad social determinants, determinants within families including mental health problems, and cascading physiologic mechanisms that shape developmental trajectories. This work integrates theories and methods from the social and behavioral sciences with population-based approaches from epidemiology in order to improve our understanding of the social determinants of health over the life course.